You are here
Edward B. Lindaman address, 1965.
Primary tabs
Download
- speakerOh. Mr Moderator. Mr. Moderator may I, through you, present
- speakerthe elder Edward Lindaman. [Thompson, William P., Moderator] Mr. Lindaman, we welcome you
- speakerwelcome you, sir.
- speakerYou
- speakerI hoped, Mr Moderator and fellow Presbyterians, that I could see the whites of their eyes
- speakerbut I can't. I received a copy of
- speakerthis proposal that you have in your hands a number of weeks ago
- speakerbecause I was on the committee that developed it. And, it was sent around for our
- speakerreview and comments.
- speakerMy reaction to the proposal was twofold.
- speakerFirst, it looks suspiciously like another
- speakerprogram
- speakerand its attendant structures. And, secondly
- speakerI couldn't figure out why it didn't spell out some specifics that
- speakera good layman could get his teeth into
- speakerdo.
- speakerIn fact, I was very disappointed. But, being a member of the
- speakercommittee, I couldn't write it off. I had to study it.
- speakerand I did I even took it to work with me to read at noon, and I
- speakerminimised while I'm eating my lunch
- speakerand I began to dream a little. And, I began to talk to
- speakerpeople about it and really study
- speakerit.
- speakerThen to lift my vision a little
- speakerAnd then I started to see what was there all the time.
- speakerThe proposal is not speaking to the
- speakerworld.
- speakerIt's not speaking newspapers. It's speaking to the whole church
- speakerThe sessions, presbyteries, the synods and the boards equally.
- speakerAnd, this is very important
- speakerthat we understand this.
- speakerIts is speaking to your session just as much as it is
- speakerspeaking to the Board of Christian Education, for example.
- speakerIt is calling the church in all of its varied
- speakerdimensions. But calling them to what?
- speakerA program? Not on your life.
- speakerIt's calling on you, the session member, and you, the board member,
- speakerto listen to what the world is saying
- speakerand to what the world is asking.
- speakerPlease don't tell me that you have been listening because
- speakerevidence seems to indicate otherwise.
- speakerBecause I think you will have to agree
- speakerthat we tend, and I'm being kind now, that we
- speakertend to be quite concerned with our own self
- speakerpreservation. We haven't really learned yet how to
- speakergive ourselves away.
- speakerIn the first paragraph,
- speakerthe General Assembly calls United Presbyterian Church etc etc to recognize
- speakerguys.
- speakerAnd, to me, that also means to listen,
- speakerto recognize that change is causing upheavals in the
- speakerlong cherished social structures, producing
- speakerwidespread alienation of man from himself.
- speakerSo you say, I know that. But, do you really know
- speakerthat? Do you know what these changes
- speakerare?
- speakerAnd more important than that, do you know what these
- speakerchanges will be? Maybe you
- speakerunderstand, maybe you have the right words.
- speakerBut do you understand what they are and what they mean? Both where you
- speakerlive and across the whole world. And, there isn't time to talk
- speakerabout these changes here now.
- speakerAnd so we're talking about listening in new ways
- speakerwith new objectivity with maturing
- speakermotives to what's going on around us
- speakerbecause these things are affecting men.
- speakerWhat's going to happen to the
- speakerorange pickers in my town in about two years
- speakerwhen all those automatic orange-picking machines that are on the drawing
- speakerboards at the University of Riverside come into being?
- speakerWe need lead time on some of those kinds of
- speakerproblems. The proposal doesn't
- speakercall us to bring in God's people like so many
- speakersheep,
- speakerbut to send them out
- speakerinto this cybernated,
- speakerexploding
- speakerpostmodern
- speakerworld, that is needful of the gospel in word
- speakerand act.
- speakerAnd that I think is evangelism at its highest.
- speakerIt have asked or rather it calls,
- speakerand we're all ordained and that word comes from the word "order."
- speakerIt calls us
- speakerto listen to today's new needs.
- speakerSome that just happenrd since we came on the platform.
- speakerAnd, then to give ourselves away to that need,
- speakerwe have to shift our gears from COME TO GO. And now a
- speakercommittee from on high can't provide a dog and pony show for your session
- speakeror your presbytery or for the Board.
- speakerAnd
- speakeryou know that. And that's why this proposal doesn't
- speakeroffer a list of do it yourself ideas.
- speakerWe're not going to give you a cake mix.
- speakerThe proposal calls for you to use your creative
- speakerimagination. Where you are.
- speakerI sometimes think we've lost this word "Pilgrim."
- speakerIt's one of the greatest words in the English language, and it belongs to
- speakerChristians. Every time I think of the word "Pilgrim," I see pilgrims. I see the men
- speakergoing west in covered wagons too on the frontier, out in front.
- speakerPilgrim.
- speakerAnd I have to ask myself Are we really pilgrims in this age of technology and
- speakersocial change like we ought to be.
- speakerIn our own presbytery, there just happens to be three great
- speakerareas of tremendous change and acceleration. In the field of
- speakertechnology, we have most of the space programs in Southern California and many other
- speakerscientific endeavors.
- speakerAnd then there's the urbanization that's
- speakeroccurring so rapidly.
- speakerAnd then there's the changes in acceleration taking place in education.
- speakerAnd, I wish it was time to talk about these three, but those are three in our particular
- speakerpresbytery
- speakerthat are changing and accelerating. What is
- speakerthis saying to the presbytery?
- speakerAll pastors and officers ought to know more about this.
- speakerA lot more than they can read on the front page of the Los Angeles Times
- speakermixed in with a lot of sensational stories. And so we have
- speakeradopted, just as an example,
- speakersome symposiums, to which fourteen of the top
- speakerpeople in those three areas will speak to every
- speakerPresbyterian pastor in Southern California and those officers that he wants to bring
- speakerwith him. I mean men like the chief scientists of the Air Force, the
- speakerpresident of the largest electronic complex in the world, the
- speakerdirector of city planning, top men in each of these fields.
- speakerNow, I can't tell you what will come out of this.
- speakerBut I will say this. That we will know far more how
- speakerto go about our task
- speakerthan we ever did before because we'll have a new perspective of
- speakerthe task
- speakerthat came out of today, not yesterday.
- speakerI almost refuse to read books that are older than three years old.
- speakerAnd certainly the space ministry you can't. If they're six months old, they are gone.
- speakerI'd love to tell you about that. About it but there just isn't time
- speakerChange is upon us. And there are lots of exciting
- speakerpossibilities. In your church and in your presbytery and
- speakeron your board. And you've got to dig them out. And no
- speakercommittee can do this for you. Now the committee can help to
- speakercross pollinate as these ideas do come out of the church.
- speakerIn our little town we have several junior high schools. There's
- speakerone with seven hundred students. And the Methodist Church had its ear to the ground
- speakerIt turns out that there is a drop out program. That takes place
- speakerin most schools.
- speakerAnd they looked into and found out that there are a lot of kids in junior high school
- speakerwho couldn't study at home. Either the home situation was
- speakerthe building, or they had too many children ,the parents have made them work when they came home, or something. These
- speakercouldn't study at home. So they never studied. And the library was
- speakerclosed at four o'clock at the school.
- speakerBut their ear was to the ground and now they man that library until five thirty every
- speakernight
- speakerWith anywhere from four to eight people from the church. And they work with these
- speakerkids even take them on bus trips on weekends from time to time.
- speakerAnd what used to be dropouts are now kids eager
- speakerfor the excitement of learning.
- speakerWell it used to be that the needs of the world were fairly
- speakerobvious and one hundred, seventy five years ago we needed schools and we
- speakerneed hospitals, that was quite obvious, and the church moved in.
- speakerDo you know what these obvious needs are today?
- speakerIn your town, in your presbytery? Comparable that is to
- speakerthose of seventy five years ago?
- speakerAnd don't say it's schools and hospitals.
- speakerYou see they aren't as obvious anymore. Society is
- speakertoo complex. And, you can't send a man out on a horse
- speakerand have him come back and tell you what they need out there.
- speakerIf by some remote chance you do know what these new needs are,
- speakerlet me ask this question.
- speakerAre they really on the top of your shopping list?
- speakerOr are they the things you never quite get around to
- speakerbecause you're so busy keeping the organization running. And so
- speakerwe must call on the church to listen
- speakerMaybe your session should stop meeting once
- speakera month
- speakeron the second Tuesday of every month for three or four hours.or that hurried
- speakerhour before the church service or after the church service.
- speakerMaybe you should meet every sixty days for a whole day from eight in the morning till eight at
- speakernight away from the church, where you can
- speakerwrestle for real with the
- speakerproblems that
- speakerchallenge your church instead of dropping in and solving them
- speakeroff the top of your head.
- speakerI know. I know I've been on a session many years
- speakerAnd don't tell me you don't do that.
- speakerNew ways to meet new problems. Yes. We've
- speakergot to find them.
- speakerWe can no longer drive down the freeway or the parkway with our eyes
- speakerglued on the rearview mirror.
- speakerSomeone said, and I don't know who it was, but it is a most wonderful quote I've ever
- speakerread.
- speakerWe are asked to take from the altars of the past the
- speakerfire, not the ashes.
- speakerWell then the other one here and I'm almost through.
- speakerIt says that we should be vitally
- speakerengaged, vitally engaged
- speakerin ways appropriate to our skills and interest
- speakerin our vocational settings in the world.
- speakerThis says to me that, in the final analysis, the lay men and the lay women carry
- speakerthe ministry into the world. And, I know you know that.
- speakerIt's an almost an insult to keep saying it. But
- speakerHave you recently examined
- speakeryour church, your presbytery or your board's program and policy to make
- speakercertain that you haven't one, that you
- speakerhaven't wasted manpower by having too big
- speakera committee. You know there are still people around who think
- speakerthey're doing God's work if they just get a guy on a church committee.
- speakerAnd secondly have you
- speakerasked a good man to be on a committee and then not given him something really
- speakerexciting to do except to sit there and nod his head "aye" on some
- speakersimple administrative trivia?
- speakerAnd then he's gone to seed.
- speakerHave you tied of the good people in church business
- speakerwhen all the time they should have been the church in the world?
- speakerWays appropriate to the setting in which these people
- speakerwork.
- speakerWell I said at the beginning that, at first, the proposal appeared to
- speakerbe a program. Well, it isn't. It's a call to be more
- speakersensitive to the new in the changing world around us where
- speakerwe are.
- speakerAnd that any attempt to give you a bag of tricks would be
- speakercompletely self-defeating.
- speakerOnly you know what is needed. We're grown up now.
- speakerNo one should have to hold our hand. We don't have to be spoon fed.
- speakerAnd I think we ought to go back to our sessions and back to our
- speakerpresbyteries, and don't forget back to our boards
- speakerwith the first order
- speakerof business following this General Assembly. With a
- speakercopy of this proposal in hand. Well studied and well read. There is ten
- speakertimes more on there than you think there is.
- speakerAnd then meet and say
- speakerwho, who in our community? Who in
- speakerour presbytery? Who in the fields related to the work our
- speakerboard does,
- speakerwho can come in from the outside and
- speakertell us what's going on out there. In the world that
- speakerwe should know.
- speakerSo that we can creatively plan to
- speakerface the stampede of the future with the
- speakercross of Jesus Christ held high for all
- speakermen to see. And so what we're doing today is an enabling
- speakerprocess.
- speakerThe action
- speakeris in your hands and in mine where we are. And it only takes one match
- speakerto start a fire.
- speakerWell.
- speakerThroughout history. And I'm not a history student, but I think it's so
- speakerobvious, throughout history
- speakerthe gospel has always found new paths of communication
- speakerwhenever the people
- speakerpossessed. And listen carefully. Whenever the people
- speakerpossessed an awakening sense
- speakerof their historic development
- speakerand their destiny.
- speakerIt always seemed to be that in times like this, people asked eternal
- speakerquestions.
- speakerAnd I sense
- speakerthat now is just such a time in history.
- speakerMaybe it's because I'm on a space program that I feel that way, and I'm
- speakercloser to the space projects, but I honestly sense
- speakerthat now is just that kind of time in history
- speakerWhy. Because man is literally
- speakerAnd I work with thirty thousand men in my company, along with two hundred
- speakerseventy thousand others in the United States.
- speakerMan is literally reaching for the stars,
- speakerwhile at the very same time, he desperately
- speakerwants to know
- speakerhow to remain human amidst this fantastic
- speakermarch of progress.
- speakerHe wants to know who he is.
- speakerThat's an eternal question. We have so much of the
- speakerhow. So much of the how
- speakerand all the things a result from it,
- speakerbut we so deeply need the why.
- speakerThe Hymnal. You can look at it after a while. Hymn number three hundred seventy three. James
- speakerRussell Lowell wrote it in eighteen forty-five. And I think the
- speakersecond verse of that hymn speaks to us now a
- speakerhundred times more than it spoke to us in eighteen forty-five. It says
- speakerthese words. And, I will end with them. He says "New occasions teach new
- speakerduties.
- speakerTime makes ancient good uncouth
- speakerHe must upwards still an onward
- speakerWho would keep abreast of truth."
- speakerThank you.
- speakerThank
- speakeryou.
- speaker[Thompson, William P. speaking] Mr Lindaman. You have us in orbit. We are grateful
- speakerthat you stepped out of your own space capsule.
- speakerThere is a motion before the House, but there is also a commissioner at microphone three. Mr. Moderator. Stow Ville
- speakerfrom Connecticut Valley Presbytery. Before you put the motion,
- speakerMay I present an amendment to add to that. May I
- speakerread it and speak to it if it is seconded?
- speakerYes you certainly may, sir.
- speakerKnowing that God gives renewal to the church and extends its
- speakeroutreach through the Holy Spirit, the one hundred
- speakerseventy seventh General Assembly calls every member
- speakerand every church and presbytery and synod to undertake the
- speakerabove expressed call. Through seeking
- speakerand listening to
- speakerand obeying
